Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

And for Bollywood film movie-maker Yash Raj Films, the numbers expose their shame.

With just a few exceptions, Bollywood fans are mostly showing Yash Raj Films the middle finger in a clear signal that they are sick of the garbage dished out by this movie house (please see below table for opening weekend numbers).

Barring Dhoom 2 and Fanaa, both the opening gross and the average per screen for the opening weekend of most recent Yash Raj films is pitiful.

U.S. Box Office Reports for Some Recent Yash Raj Films Movies

Year        Movie              Opening        Rank   Theaters    Average
                                     Gross                                      Gross
2006     Dhoom 2            $979,001       17          63        $15,539

2006     Fanaa                $753,067       11         72        $10,459

2007    Jhoom Barabar      $455,257       16          83        $5,485
           Jhoom

2007    Ta Ra Rum Pum    $425,102       24          85        $5,001

2007    Chak De India       $351,887       20          62        $5,675 

2007    Laaga Chunari       $320,987       32          60        $5,349
           Mein Daag

2008   Tashan               $301,226        24          75        $4,016

2007   Aaja Nachle          $257,500        22          66        $3,901

2008  Thoda Pyaar         $181,610         19            69         $2,632
            Thoda Magic

2006   Kabul Express       $142,591         29         50         $2,851

Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic is the latest crappy Continue Reading…

Yash Raj Films Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic  has met with a deservedly disastrous response at the U.S. Box Office.

This pitiful apology of a movie has grossed a mere $181,610 for the June 27-29, 2008 opening weekend.

Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic opened in 69 theaters in the U.S. and its average per theater worked out to a measly $2,632. What a shame.

Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic opened at No-19 at the U.S. box office.

Given its pathetic quality, it’s no surprise that Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic has had one of the lowest openings Continue Reading…

(Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic - Box Office Disaster)

There should be a law to prevent the lobotomized idiots at Yash Raj Films from ever producing movies.

From the nincompoops who brought us trash like Tashan,  Aaja Nachle, Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom and Ta Ra Rum Pum, comes a new horror show - Zyada Garbage, Zero Magic oops Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic (the correct but inapt name of this piece of trash).

A depressingly bad movie, Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic has no raison d’être except some dodos in Mumbai fancy that if the likes of Ram Gopal Varma can make bad movies, hey, they can make worse movies.

This movie falls way, way short of delivering on its cute title that we feel compelled to describe it in the rest of this review by the more apposite Zyada Garbage, Zero Magic.

Zyada Garbage, Zero Magic has little going for it.

It lacks a decent story.

It lacks decent acting.

It lacks decent music.

In short, Zyada Garbage, Zero Magic lacks all the essential ingredients of a nice Bollywood movie.

Zyada Garbage, Zero Magic is (mis)directed by Kunal Kohli, the same fella who brought us that fine Continue Reading…

Kuselan - Judas Rajinikanth Spits on Tamil Movie Fans

Sitting in the U.S. it’s hard to definitively say how Kamal Haasan’s crappy freakshow Dasavatharam is faring at the box office.

But news reports trickling in from India suggest that Dasavatharam is not doing well at the box office. If that is indeed the case, we would not be surprised because the movie is a pathetic fiasco from the so-called Ulaganayagan (Universal Hero).

Ha ha, if Kamal Haasan is Ulaganayagan, then we are Alexander the Great.

A report from Indiatimes (part of the Times of India group) says that the movie has not done well at the box office.

Here’s an excerpt from the IndiaTimes Report:

Yes, the hype, hoopla and the billions spent on it have not been able to save Kamal Haasan’s magnum opus Dasavatharam from sinking at the box office …. Dasavatharam has not been able to hold up interest levels over the weekend.

Times of India’s Indiatimes is not the only one Indian Continue Reading…

2008 has so far turned out to be an annus horribilis for fans of Tamil and Hindi movies.

If you are sick of crappy movies like Dasavatharam, Sarkar Raj, Tashan, Bhoothnath, Kuruvi and Azhagiya Tamil Magan coming out of the augean pits of Bollywood and Kollywood we don’t blame ya. So are we. Sick to the stomach.

The blundering buffoons of Bollywood like Ram Gopal Varma and Abhishek Bachchan and the know-nothing knuckleheads of Kollywood like Kamal Haasan and Vijay have heaped rubbish on the heads of fans this year even as they extort hefty sums in ticket prices.

But despair not, film buffs.

If the Bollywood buffoons and the Kollywood knuckleheads can’t deliver, there’s plenty of fine foreign films out there, if only we are willing to expand our sights.

Here are a few nice foreign movies that the  Continue Reading…

Hollywood director Steven Spielberg’s and his fellow principals at Dreamworks SKG are close to a deal with Anil Ambani’s Reliance ADA Group that will provide them with $500 million-$600 million to create a new movie venture, according to Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

Although a new comer to the entertainment business, Reliance ADA Group has quickly built up a significant presence in Bollywood (India’s Mumbai-based film industry and a factory for mostly crappy Hindi movies) through its various ventures like Adlabs Films, Reliance Big Entertainment, BigFlicks, Big Motion Pictures and Big Animation.

Reliance ADA Group Chairman Anil Ambani’s wife Tina Munim is a former Bollywood actress.

Here’s an excerpt from the WSJ’s Front Page story:

Mumbai-based Reliance ADA Group would provide Mr. Spielberg and company with $500 million to $600 million in equity, moving them one step closer to ending one of Hollywood’s most contentious and closely watched battles [between Spielberg et al and the Paramount bosses]. In Reliance, the DreamWorks team also would have an unusual and ambitious partner in the film business: an Indian firm with interests in telecommunications, financial services and entertainment that wants to build a media empire by financing Hollywood pictures.

The deal amounts to a marriage of some of the biggest names in the Hollywood and Indian business worlds, with Reliance getting a large stake in the new company. DreamWorks, which makes live-action films that have included last year’s “Blades of Glory” and “Dreamgirls” in 2006, would likely seek another $500 million or so in debt financing elsewhere to give its new venture enough money to make a slate of about six films a year. The company would then choose a studio to distribute the films, which is still an open question. General Electric Co.’s Universal Pictures, where Mr. Spielberg began his career, is thought to be the director’s preference to release his future works, but News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox also is thought to be a serious contender. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.)

Boy, we sincerely hope that Steven Spielberg et al Continue Reading…

Firefox 3 debuted today to a grand response - by 10:30PM EST, the popular open source browser had been downloaded 2,751,944 times.

No, we are not surprised. We’ve been using Firefox for years. And happily, may we add.

Here are some of the highlights of Firefox 3:

*  Offers over 15,000 improvements, including the smart location bar, malware protection, and lots of under the hood work to boost speed and performance of the browser 

* Available today in approximately 50 languages

* Two to three times faster than its predecessor

* Built on top of the powerful new Gecko 1.9 platform

* Uses less memory while it’s running

The bigger our Indian movie stars, the greater the bullshit that falls from their lips on occasion.

The latest to earn the title of BS King is none other than our Ulaganayagan (Universal Hero) Kamal Haasan, whose embarrassingly bad Dasavatharam is now running on movie screens in several continents.

Some of Kamal’s recent comical statements suggest that while he may not have done a great job with the story of Dasavatharam, he’s indeed suitable for writing dialogs for Vadivelu and Vivek (two popular Tamil comedians).

According to NDTV, here’s what Kamal had to say at the launch of the audio for the film Kodaikanal:

The day when Hollywood would yearn for awards from India rather than (us) running behind the Oscars is not far off going by the improving quality of our films.

What is Kamal smoking? 

If Indian films are improving, it must indeed be a closely guarded secret Continue Reading…

Sarkar Raj has crashed at the U.S. box office in its second week.

This trashy Bollywood movie’s second weekend gross was down by 73.8%. (Please click here for Sarkar Raj opening weekend gross collection data.)

Featuring the three Bachchans, Sarkar Raj is a piece of trash from Ram Gopal Varma, the director who last year brought us one of the ugliest films ever made in the history of motion pictures - Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag.

Starring Amitabh Bachchan, his son Abhishek Bachchan and daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan, Sarkar Raj has all the ingredients of a disaster - pathetic performances by Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai-Bachchan, so-so performance by Amitabh Bachchan, mediocre story, cliched dialogs, pedestrian photography and music, and bizarre chants (Govinda, Govinda).

In the overall ranking at the U.S. box office, Sarkar Raj slipped to Continue Reading…

Movie critics across a spectrum of publications have found Kamal Haasan’s freak show Dasavatharam less than satisfying.

Here are excerpts from a sample of Dasavatharam Reviews:

NDTV (T.S.Sudhir):

Dasavathaaram, unfortunately, remains just a film with its USP of 10 Kamals. This Kamal does not blossom the way he did in Indian or Nayakan, Appu Raja, Mahanadi, Avvai Shanmughi or in Thevar Magan.

As a Kamal admirer, I left the hall disappointed. Amid all the grandeur of a massive canvas, I missed the soul.

One of the best in the business falters with the film’s story and screenplay.

SIFY (Moviebuzz):

Dasavatharam will fall short of the huge expectation and hype it had generated.

So what went wrong? It had absolutely no story to speak of, and the twists and turns were predictable. In the end, it turned out to be a routine film rendered more aggravating by its incessant near-miss plot structure. You desperately want to like the film for its maddeningly zany characters played out by Kamal Hassan. Alas! There’s only so much life an actor can pump into a moribund script. It once again proves the old theory that, without a proper story and script, no film, however big the actors are, can succeed.

Rediff (Shobha Warrier):

In fact, it is very easy to dislike the film and get dissatisfied with the much hyped ten performances….

But first, let me talk about the 11th role that Kamal Haasan has performed; that of the script writer, which he has failed miserably…

The biggest failure of Dasavathaaram is the lack of a proper story, a tight screenplay and well connected characters. One gets the feeling that because Kamal Haasan wanted to make history by portraying ten different characters, he created them. Otherwise, one cannot think of any justification in him appearing all sorts of get-ups.

Behindwoods:

The usual filmi gimmicks such as grandma-Kamal walking on the shoulders of people, and Bush-Kamal trying to act hip could have been avoided. 

In short, with unexpected twists and turns missing in the film, Dasavatharam is a make-up magic show that disappoints as drama and satisfies as a technical showpiece.

OneIndia:

After watching Dasavatharam- the so called magnum opus of the year- an ardent fan of Kamal Hassan will ask why indeed it is called a magnum opus in the first place. Why was all the hype, tension,

Continue Reading…

Dasavatharam is the second dud in a row from Tamil film star Kamal Haasan.

If Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu (2006) was a bitter pill to swallow for Kamal Haasan’s fans, Dasavatharam is a bigger disappointment because of the heightened expectations raised by the ten roles Kamal plays in this movie.

An incomprehensibly mediocre movie, it’s a shame that Dasavatharam is the best that someone with 35+ years in the Tamil movie business can come up with.

A total mess of a story is compounded by a mostly so-so performance by Kamal Haasan (except in some roles like the Indian intelligence officer Balram Naidu, Patti and Rangaraja Nambi) and below par music.

Since Kamal Haasan also takes credit for the story, screenplay and dialogs in Dasavatharam, it’s only right that the major discredit for the movie should also accrue to this manga madaya (stupid fellow).

If the overall story - with the distracting side stories - is a jumbled mess, the dialogs are Continue Reading…

What a shame.

Desi butcher and Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, who’s been butchering Citi jobs even while feeding like a greedy pig at the trough, has to suffer the ignominy of seeing his hedge fund Old Lane shut down following a mediocre performance.

Vikram Pandit

Here’s what the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reports on the front page today:

Citigroup Inc. is closing a hedge fund co-founded by Chief Executive Vikram Pandit, 11 months after Citigroup bought the fund’s management company for more than $800 million.

Old Lane Partners has been dogged by mediocre returns and the loss of top managers. Citigroup plans to shut it and buy what is left of its assets, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Pandit personally reaped at least $165 million when Citigroup bought Old Lane in July 2007, following its founding the previous year. At the time, many large banks and brokerages saw hedge funds as a lucrative new business. Citigroup was also willing to pay a premium to land Mr. Pandit, who quickly moved up the ladder and became chief executive in December. 

From what we can gather, Old Lane has not been a complete

Continue Reading…